[EricH]

Originally Posted by Citrus Dad

I'm sorry that you have to get so angry about a comment based on the information available on Blue Alliance. There is no indication in the Sunday information that the field was somehow of limited size. (And Saturday's info shows only the elimination alliances.) A more measured comment explaining the situation rather than lashing out is much more appropriate on a web forum. Please consider your language and tone when you enter a discussion here. It sounds like your anger is better aimed at the event organizers, but rationally and calmly discussing the options with them about how to make it a better event.

I was responding to the fact that without having ever been to the event, or apparently viewing the publicly available team list (follow the event link from the TBA page, and it's one more link to the spreadsheet), you had the appearance of criticizing the teams at the event for making choices that they chose to make. I believe a close analogy would be the "scorched earth" debate, particularly if triggered by someone from far away--say it happened at a Sacramento offseason and I, never having been to such an event, complained from down here. So, I responded from the standpoint of someone who WAS at the event, both days, working WITH the organizers to keep the event going. Trust me, it was a lot harder and a lot more frustrating than it should probably have been. Reference the thread on the event for some of the issues we had at various times.

Also, I did note (in the "spoiler") that I was not being entirely serious in the second paragraph. Some of it was intended as a "where does this sort of questioning stop", by showing the logical continuation of your stated reason for offseasons. For the record, the goal of the Fall Classic differs somewhat from your reasoning; for convenience:

Originally Posted by SCRRF Fall Classic page

The mission of the Fall Classic is to expand the awareness of FIRST Robotics Competition to students, teachers, sponsors and mentors from all across Southern California, as well as to provide existing teams an opportunity to compete with their robotic creations once again.

I guess some folks can't tell the difference between someone being angry and someone being sarcastic, even when the "sarcasm tags" are in use. It was a little bit of both, to be fair, and I did significant rewriting to tone it down from the original post. (On the topic of discussing with the event organizers--if you have a problem, real or perceived, with how an event is run, or something that happens with an event, shouldn't you contact the organizers, prior to posting on CD, as much as possible?)